Treat her like a lady, and she'll always bring you home.

In 2001, blogs were very new things. In
fact, as much more time was spent
arguing talking about what blogs even
were, and where they fit into the media
landscape than was spent actually, you
know, writing in them. In fact, I don't
even think the word "blogging" existed
back then, and whenever it arrived on the
scene, it was used pejoratively to describe
the equally-distasteful "bloggers" who
were on the verge of not just threatening
the status quo, but disrupting and then
changing it forever.
I read a lot of blogs (many of them were
just called online journals or something
similar), so when I made my first stupid
website at Geocities (RIP) called Where's
My Burrito, I put a blog in there, right
next to my hit counter and guest book.
My first entry in that blog looks
something like this:
So the votes are officially in.
Out of the total of 4 votes I got, all of
them said it would be cool to have an
online journal, so here it is.
Extra special thanks go to loren who
directed me to blogger, a website that will
hopefully make this whole weblog (the
cool kids call it a “blog”) easy and
painless.
I’m off now to make dinner for the
family. You know what we’re having
tonight?
Burritos. No shit.
That was posted on July 24, 2001.
Goddamn, that seems like an eternity ago.
The next day, I wrote this:
My birthday is this Sunday, and we’re
having the carpets cleaned this morning.
And my cat, Sketch, ran out of the house,
and we can’t find him.
Sucks.
And then, later, this:
Okay, you can all stop worrying. We
found Sketch. He was behind the couch.
Carpets are drying, and the yard is getting
clean! Whee!
Those two posts are as hilarious to me as
anything I've ever posted on Twitter, and
now that I look at them again, they're
similar to most of the stupid things I post
on Twitter, so there's that.
Shortly after I started that blog, I got even
more help from loren, and after an
intense month of study, trial, and error
(mostly error), I made my very own
website at wilwheaton.net.
I announced it in the usual fashion:
The New Site Is Open!
Holy crap!! In 6 weeks, I’ve gone from
knowing nothing about HTML and using
the lame Yahoo! PageBuilder, to building
my own site , using php and modifying
entire scripts.
This weblog will no longer be updated. Go
to the new weblog, and see what’s up!
I used Grey Matter for the blog, becoming
an unintentional stress tester when the
existence of my blog was discovered by
Fark, Metafilter , and Slashdot .
Grey Matter couldn't handle the load, so
when I discovered Movable Type, I
switched to that software, and it took
veyr good care of me for years, through a
lot of ups and downs, through my entire
journey from The Guy Who Used To Be
Wesley Crusher to the person I am today.
Then, in 2006, I blew it all up :
Way back in September of last year, I
attempted to upgrade Movable Type, the
blogging software that powers WWdN. I
also attempted to move a few thousand
entries and hundreds of thousands of
comments into a newly-created (and
faster) MySQL database.
And, uh, I broke it .
Actually, I didn’t break it. Someone who
left a comment broke it when they used a
seemingly random string of characters to
indicate a break in their comment.
Unbeknownst to me and them, it was the
same string of characters MT used to
indicate the end of an entry and its
associated comments. When MT was
moving all the data into its new (did I
mention faster?) database, it came to that
string of characters, and said to itself, “Oh
boy! I get to start a new entry now! Let’s
see, what’s the TITLE of that entry?”
Look . . . look . . . look . . .
“Uh-oh, there’s no TITLE. I’d better look
some more.”
Look . . . look . . . look . . .
“Yeah, it’s still not there. Well, I don’t
know what the next entry is TITLEd, so
I’m going to just barf all over the server
now, and fail. I’m sure one of the Users I
heard about in TRON will figure this out
and fix it quickly. There’s no way my
User, Wil, would stay in some backup
blog for six months!”
Ha! Stupid smug software. I’ve been in
Exile for nine months! Who’s laughing
now, jerk?
Who's laughing, indeed.
Well, I landed here in Exile, where I've
stayed for over six years, because I'd
reached a point in my life where just
writing was more important to me than
the software and publishing platform I
used to do it.
I've been very happy here, mostly
because TypePad has worked very well
for me, and because these have been
some of the best years of my life (hooray
for hard work paying off!)... but there
were these moments when I'd suddenly
and unexpectedly feel sad about WWdN.
I'd miss the URL, and I'd miss the
satisfaction that came with knowing that
it was mine, that it was something I made
(mostly) myself.
So I started working on stuff and things,
and after a few days of not-very-intense
and stupidly easy work, I taught myself
WordPress. I installed it on my server. I
imported all my blog entries. I messed
around with some themes and basic
design things. I installed plugins and
widgets and made it look like something
that didn't totally suck. There's still a little
bit of fiddly under-the-hood server stuff
that needs to happen, but it's pretty much
the way I want it.
So, this weekend, after way, way too
many years (or, maybe, now that I think
of it, exactly the right number of years) in
exile, I’m finally returning home.
Wow. Typing that made me feel all the
feels. I wasn't expecting that.
I'm going home.
Yep. It happened again.
Well.
*clears throat*
If you read my blog through an RSS
subscription, you won't notice any
changes (It's feeds.feedburner.com/
wwdn ), but you'll now go to WIL
WHEATON dot NET to comment instead
of WIL WHEATON dot NET: in Exile.
Woah. More feels.
Um. So. Yeah. I'm sure there will be a few
bumps along the way while I figure out
handling comments and stuff, but I'm
sure we'll find a way to get through it
together.
My TODO list for WWdN looks something
like this:
Get some of those nifty little icons for
Twitter, Google Plus, Tumblr, etc., and put
them up in the corner with links to their
relevant accounts.
Maybe rotate header images, because
why not?
Have a homebrew
Potentially set a fixed page as the “front
page” of WWdN, which has an excerpt
from the most recent blog post, as well as
dynamically updating feeds from Twitter,
YouTube, Tumblr, G+, etc.
WordPress veterans: Any advice you have
for a WordPress noob is most welcome.
Everyone who first found me at WWdN,
followed me to Exile, and plans to follow
me back home*: I just can’t thank you
enough for the years of support and
encouragement you’ve given me. I
sincerely hope it’s been worth it for you,
because it’s meant a lot to me.
To everyone else out there: The secret is
to bang the rocks together, guys.
*damn, all these feels are feely.